Cite your tweets

Spotted on Twitter – a useful blog posts on citing tweets (let’s leave aside why you’d want to cite them, and any questions over their academic validity shall we)

How to cite twitter posts in APA style

What amuses me is that makes the reference longer that the tweet in the first place!  And does one use the authors real name or twitter name to ID?  Personally I’d favour the latter, since my Twitter ID is actually a discretely different persona to my RL one.

But at least now you can have a go at capturing those moments of fleeting tweeting brilliance if you like!

What international students are letting themselves in for

Interesting read in the Guardian, by a newspaper editor from India, who is also on the faculty of a journalism college in Chennai.

He argues that the large number of international students from China and India may trip over some of the differences between higher education practice in those countries and the UK.   He cites his own experience in India of institutions not teaching academic skills like referencing, study skills or time management.  This could put burdens on staff at UK institutions, who may have to fill in those gaps.  And universities (in the UK, is the implication, though I am not sure) may be ignoring their own guidelines on English language requirements for overseas students, leading to students not being able to cope with their course. 

Whether these things are widespread or not I do not know, but even if they occur only in some places, there are implications for us as librarians working with international students.   I have noticed with masters’ courses in biomedical sciences that a lot, even perhaps a majority, or students are international students, and that they have variable levels of English (although infinitely better than any language that I can manage) and computer skills.    If the practices in this article are widespread, then we can expect that to continue, and we can expect an impact on things like referencing skills.

Get your citations on Facebook with CiteMe

CiteMe is a Facebook application from OCLC that searches Worldcat and converts results into

CiteMe

different citation formats for you (currently: APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, Turabian).  Type in the title, author, subject, or isbn and it formulates the citation.

Compared to using Refworks / Endnote there isn’t any advantage as 

you can only do one at a time, and from a UoL perspective it doesn’t cover the referencing styles we mostly use anyway.  Still interesting to think of how lots of tools could enhance students studies. 

Any volunteers to write a Facebook application for our inhouse referencing styles?